Today we face a climate of ever increasing misdirection by popular media. This site, along with others, aims to reveal the reality of America and the loss of fact inherent to the over riding theme of our current political and social confusion: Purposeful deception.

Monday, February 20, 2012

American Spring

After 10
years of war, a massive bail-out of Wall Street, and the worst recession since
the Great Depression, Washington
has run out of money. As the pro-Israel lobby’s frantic efforts to foment
war with Iran increase, the
Obama administration is finally winding down the ill-conceived, immoral,
counter-productive, and unsuccessful but hideously destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military
is reducing troop levels, not hiring new recruits. Unable to find work,
many Americans have thrown themselves into an effort re-invent the corrupt
system that is failing them.

In a word,
Occupy Wall Street was – and is – brilliant. It has reinvigorated a
flagging antiwar movement and rekindled interest in progressive ideas and
ideals. On a conceptual level, with its emphasis on nonviolent protest,
direct democracy, and direct action in support of economic justice, honest
government, accountability, and an end to oppression, exploitation, and war,
OWS has shown itself to be everything that official Washington and Wall Street
are not. Though corporate media outlets were slow to recognize the
importance, authenticity, and vigor of the new popular movement, once they did
the national security apparatus quickly began to coordinate efforts by municipal,
county, and state law enforcement agencies around the nation to stifle OWS
dissent.

In many
cities, including New York, Seattle,
and Oakland,
unnecessary violence has characterized law enforcement reactions to OWS
encampments and activities. New York Police Department Deputy Inspector
Anthony Bologna, who was filmed pepper spraying, without provocation, a group
of women standing in a police pen near Union Square on September 24, seemed to
set the nasty tone.

CounterPunch author Pam Martens reported on
October 10 that, “If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless
opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting
trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods
that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani
administration in New York City
in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock
Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with
crimes, to order up a flank of New
York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a
pastrami on rye.

“The
corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no
overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to
arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

“New York City gets a 10
percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The
City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private
corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the
Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city
since 2002.”

The
taxpayer pays for each officer’s training, his uniform, his gun, and will pick
up the legal tab for lawsuits resulting from official acts by police personnel
following the illegal instructions of their corporate masters. Lawsuits have
already sprung up from the program, according to Martens. Bologna has been sued by
OWS protesters.

Oakland police shot Scott Olsen, 24, in the
head with a tear gas canister on October 25. Olsen, a member of Veterans
For Peace, was peacefully protesting when he was shot. The former Marine
who served two tours of duty in Iraq
was hospitalized with a concussion and head trauma.

In Seattle, police
pepper-sprayed 84-year-old Dorly Rainey, a 19-year-old pregnant woman, and a
priest involved in nonviolent protest on November 15.

“Cops
shoved their bicycles into the crowd. ... If it
had not been for my hero [Iraq Vet Caleb Walez] I would have been down on the
ground and trampled,” Rainey told reporters.

In
December, the Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that Seattle
PD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force in violation of the
Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994. Oakland PD is currently under investigation for
excessive use of force. NYPD is facing persistent calls for investigation of a
stop and frisk policy that disproportionately targets Blacks and Latinos, while
civil rights groups are calling for an investigation of NYPD’s monitoring of
Muslims across the Northeast.

During a
mid-November interview, Oakland
mayor Jean Quan told the BBC that the crackdown on OWS was a
coordinated effort involving the mayors of other major cities.

“I was
recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the
same situation where what had started as a political movement and a political
encampment ended up being an encampment no longer in control by the people who
started them,” said Ms. Quan.

In an
article posted on the World Socialist Website, Andre Damon reported
on November 17 that a, “spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Mayors told Mother
Jones magazine Wednesday that the call Ms. Quan mentioned was one of
numerous conference calls—which included mayors and top police brass—that
focused on discussing “efforts cities have made to accommodate the
demonstrators and maintain public health and safety,” a statement that the real
Mother Jones, labor activist and organizer Mary Harris, would have dismissed as
ludicrous.

Nationwide,
OWS arrests number well over 6,000 according to published reports, but given
that the co-ordinated campaign against OWS involves copious amounts of
disinformation and propaganda, all corporate media reports about OWS are best
viewed with skeptical eye.

Author and
journalist Chris Hedges limned the national security state’s strategy to
contain, disrupt, and marginalize insurgencies and popular movements such as
OWS in a February 13 Truthdig article.

“Physically
eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to disrupt
communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create
rival organizations … to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate
the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries. Provoke the movement
– or front groups acting in the name of the movement – to carry out actions
such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the
wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts
supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media.
Finally, offer up a political alternative,” wrote Hedges.

OWS is a
popular nonviolent movement, one which has much, much more in common with the
Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. than with the violent
tactics of Tupamaros of Uruguay, the Irish Republican Army, or the Weather
Underground, but some in government are determined to destroy it and are using
many of the same tools they would employ were OWS a terrorist insurgency.
That mistake may prove profoundly detrimental to what remains of civil
liberties in the USA.

Some
municipal law enforcement agencies have avoided violence in dealing with OWS
citizen activists. Iowa, a state with a long history of progressive
politics and one that has perhaps the strongest antiwar movement in the nation,
responded to OWS in ways that other states and cities might profitably
examine. After Republican governor Terry Branstad refused to extend a
permit for an Occupy Des Moines encampment on the state Capitol grounds, on
October 9, Iowa State Patrol officers arrested more than 30 Occupiers who
refused to leave. Days later, Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie stepped in
and offered Occupy Des Moines (ODM) a city park on the opposite side of the
Capitol complex.

“One of the
original purposes of parks was for people to gather. We want you to feel like
you can gather,” Cownie told ODM Occupiers on October 14. “I want my police
force out chasing the bad guys and arresting criminals.”

The mayor’s
administration and the Des Moines Police Department (DMPD) worked cooperatively
with ODM for months, allowing the encampment to exist, inspecting the park
regularly, talking with neighborhood residents, and respecting the rights of
the Occupiers.

During
November and December, as their plans for direct action during the weeks before
the Iowa Caucuses advanced, Des Moines Catholic Workers and other experienced
local peace and social justice activists worked with ODM Occupiers to conduct
several nonviolence training sessions.

Kathleen
McQuillen of the American Friends Service Committee in Des Moines, and Frank Cordaro of the Des
Moines Catholic Worker facilitated a three-hour nonviolence training workshop
at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting House on December 4.

“What we’ve
got going for us is that we have collectively said to each other and to the
world that, ‘We’re going to be nonviolent. For this day, for this action,
this group is going to be nonviolent.’ That empowers us,” Cordaro told
activists during a small group session at Friends House.

“This is
entry-level civil disobedience, there’s minimal risk. I’m not saying that
it’s insignificant, but it’s not that serious. If we were taking on
serious risk, we’d do a lot more than three hours training,” said the former
priest whose anti-nuclear weapons and antiwar activism in the USA and in Europe
spans decades and began long before he left the priesthood in 2003 after 18
years.

From their
encampment at Stewart Square Park and rented space in a building in Des Moines’
East Village, ODM Occupiers, along with Catholic Workers, representatives of
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and members of several local churches
and peace and justice organizations mounted a vigorous and sustained campaign
of nonviolent direct action that involved several marches on and occupations of
local banks and protests at both Democratic Party and Republican Party campaign
events and candidate campaign headquarters during the run up to the Iowa
Caucuses. The Occupy the Iowa Caucuses coalition developed and maintained
communications and cooperation with municipal law enforcement agencies in the
Des Moines area, attracted over a hundred OWS movement activists from across
the nation, conducted nonviolent direct actions, and staged a Peoples Caucus
that attracted hundreds of activists, interested onlookers, and media personnel
from around the world.

Between
October 9 and January 3, local police forces made more than 100 Occupy-related
arrests, and DMPD costs alone in regular and overtime pay for officers
monitoring dozens of Occupy actions amounted to more than $75,000. But
the Iowa Occupiers training in and commitment to Jesusonian/Gandhian/Kingian
nonviolence proved remarkably successful. No violent confrontations between
municipal police officers and occupiers occurred – not even one. Police
officers respected the rights of Occupy activists, and Occupy activists
cooperated peacefully with police.

That’s an
accomplishment that all Americans can be proud of. It’s also a model that
other cities and states might well examine and seek to emulate as spring
approaches.

The OWS
movement is evolving, and the continuing commitment to nonviolence is essential
to its success.

Nonviolence,
peaceful evolution rather than violent revolution, is what democracy looks

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